Name a game and more often than not, Logitech has the right gaming peripheral for it. The company certainly pulls out all the stops when it comes to wowing the gamers with its products. For instance, at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, its new G-series lineup was revealed and one of those that caught our eyes is the Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard, which landed right in our labs recently.

Take Control!

The G13 is designed as an add-on to your gaming keyboard. Though you might notice only 25 programmable keys (actually, it's 29 if you really squeezed it dry and programmed macros on its directional pad), it's actually 3 times that amount. Basically, you can switch between three macro sets via the macro buttons located just above the first row of keys. This theoretically gives you up to 87 programmable keys to tinker with.

All the keys are actually within easy reach, giving one quick access to all the preset macros or shortcuts assigned on each key. No doubt, this is thanks to the contours of the device that allowed our wrist to rest snugly on the wrist pad. We were able to lay our palms comfortably on the whole gameboard and the keys were firm to prevent accidental inputs and provided a decent amount of tactile feedback. Sized just about right, the joystick at the lower right corner felt neither too small, nor overly big for the thumb to comfortably rest on.

Battle Program: On

Seeing as how the G13 will likely be utilized by your left hand, the default settings for the G13 have the joystick acting as the WASD keys on your keyboard. Now, things can be as simple as assigning just a function or a shortcut to the specific key. Or it can be as intense as creating and recording a new macro with multiple keystrokes to get things going.

The G13 also includes onboard memory to save your customized profiles, though it's limited to five profiles at one time. But the idea is to allow you to bring along the G13 to a LAN party or tournament for a bout of online gaming, without losing the gaming profiles that matters most to you.

On top of the G13 is the LED screen that displays a myriad of information. The screen displays information that ranges from the standard date and time, to more in-depth reports such as CPU and memory usage. RSS feeds can also be displayed on the LED screen. And if you have any media files playing in the background, this will be reflected on the LED screen too. What we would have liked to see however, are dedicated media keys to cycle through our songs during the lull moments in our gaming sessions.

Gamers Rejoice

Gamers will probably fall in love with the Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard's delivery of up to 87 distinct programmable keys for the barrage of macros they employ in-game. Factor in an ergonomic form factor that provides an adequate amount of comfort level for your wrist, a well curved design to fit the contours of your palms and fingers and you got a winner with the G13. We figure that the S$139 price tag won't put off the true hardcore gamer who'll be more than willing to fork it all out to become even more "l33t" in his gaming career.